Firefox Introduces New Rickroll Protection

By Brian Ashe

Mountain View, CA - The developers of Firefox, a web browser created by the Mozilla Foundation, have decided to once again rescue the masses from the horrors of the Internet. Having produced top-notch phishing protection, malware identification and other security features unmatched by their competitors they are now introducing the "Rickroll Detection Filter."

This new filtering protection will pre-screen links when the page renders and determine the campiness of the content. The new technology is called "Quash Unreasonable Electronic Entertainment Recognition" or QUEER. It will start being tested in the fifth beta of version three of their flagship product.

Avid gamer Ronald Parks was Rickrolled just hours before attending a LAN party to play Halo. "I started humming the tune while fragging the other team. They all stopped playing because they were laughing so hard. It was embarrassing. They all think I'm gay now," says Ronald.

"This new scheme will protect the many users who are now suffering, sometimes for days, with catchy yet awful songs and images in their head," says Hans Freidenhaufer, a top developer at the Mozilla Foundation. He continues, "The worst part is when you are caught humming these tunes in your cubicle when someone walks by. The QUEER filter will keep you from having to wear that old Metallica t-shirt to work for the next three days to restore your respectability."

The filtering mechanism will be extensible with plug-ins to catch threats that may get past the default engine. The first of these extensions, the "LoLCat Image Malady Protection" or LIMP, has the ability to still render pages where LolCats have been found with the offending images removed.

When asked if the QUEER filter would protect against things like the Goatse website, Mr. Freidenhaufer responded, "While the imagery depicted there is rather horrific, the use of this particular attack is usually directed at an individual not to the public at large. Also, it is not used lightly. If you have pointed someone to that page, they probably deserved it."